4733. 'And said, Let us not strike him, [as to his] soul' means that it must not be annihilated because it is the life of religion. This is clear from the meaning of 'striking' as annihilating, and from the meaning of 'soul' as life, dealt with in 1000, 1005, 1436, 1742, in this case the life of religion. It is evident that the acknowledgement and worship of the Lord's Divine Human constitutes the life of religion from what has been stated just above in 4731, and also from the fact that people's disposition is such that they wish to worship One of whom, by the use of their perception and thought, they can form some mental idea, or - in the case of those who are ruled by their senses - One of whom they can have some sensory image. Nor do they wish to worship Him unless the Divine is present within Him. This is a common feature throughout the human race. Consequently gentiles worship idols in which, they believe, One who is Divine is present, while others worship people that have died whom they believe to be gods or else saints. For nothing can be stimulated in man unless there is something to bring his senses into play.

[2] The majority of those who say that they acknowledge a supreme being, but of whom they have no mental picture, do not acknowledge any God, but nature instead, which they acknowledge because they have a mental grasp of what this is. Very many learned persons among Christians are like this, and for the added reason that they do not believe that the Lord's Human is Divine. Therefore to withhold from the worship of wood and stones those people who have set themselves far apart from the Divine and have become bodily-minded; to withhold them also from the worship of anyone after his death and so of some devil within this person, instead of the worship of God Himself because they could not perceive Him in any way; thus to withhold everything of the Church from destruction, and the human race along with the Church, the Divine was willing to take the Human upon Himself and make this Divine. Let the learned beware therefore of thinking of the Lord's Human without at the same time believing that this is Divine. Otherwise they set themselves a stumbling-block and at length believe nothing.

1005. That 'requiring your blood with your souls' means that violence done to charity will punish itself, 'blood' meaning violence, and 'souls' people who do violence, is clear from what comes before and after, and also from the meaning of 'blood' in the contrary sense, as well as from the meaning of 'soul' in the contrary sense. First from what comes before in the previous verse referring to the eating of blood, which, as shown, meant profanation, and from what comes after in the next verse referring to the shedding of blood, it is consequently clear that the subject here is the state and the punishment of one who mixes holy things with unholy. It is further clear from the meaning of 'blood' in the contrary sense, in that 'blood' in the genuine sense means that which is celestial and in reference to a regenerate spiritual person means charity - which constitutes the celestial in his case - but in the contrary sense means violence done to charity, and therefore that which is contrary to charity, namely all hatred, all revenge, all cruelty, and especially profanation, as becomes clear from the places in the Word that are quoted in 374, 376. Finally it is clear from the meaning of 'soul' in the contrary sense, in that in the Word 'soul' means life, in general, and so everybody who lives, but also means, since a person's life is by nature what he himself is, any individual who does violence. This may be confirmed from many parts of the Word, but for the moment let solely the following from Moses do so,

He who eats blood, I will set My face ¹ against the soul eating blood, and I will cut him off from among his people, for the soul of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it upon the altar, to make atonement for your souls, for the blood itself will make atonement by reason of the soul. Leviticus 17:10-11, 14.

Here 'soul' stands for life in three different senses, as it does many times elsewhere. The fact that violence done to charity will punish itself will be clear from what follows.

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